ABSTRACT
In an inspiring paper, On the Language of Physical Science, Halliday (1993) charts the history of scientific English from the late fourteenth to the late twentieth centuries. He exemplifies the evolution of its grammar with texts from the physical sciences by Chaucer 1391, Newton 1675-1687, Priestley 1760s, Dalton 1827, Maxwell 1881 and a contemporary research report. To begin with, he summarises the ‘diatypic variation’ of this register ‘in field, extending, transmitting or exploring knowledge…; in tenor, addressed to specialists, to learners or to laymen…; in mode, phonic or graphic channel’.
